ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?!?!? Gladius Part 6

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!?!?!? Gladius Part 6

I told you I was still playing this, and oh boy do I have some progress to report this time!  Just warning now, this will probably be the longest edition of this yet and will contain spoilers for what I’m assuming is rapidly approaching the end of the game.

So anyway, we continue our journey to kicking the asses of every region in this game.  Luckily, this is made pretty easy in this last area by only having two different tournaments to conquer.  Granted the battles themselves weren’t exactly easy...but we’ve preserved through worse so of course we are victorious!

After beating both of the tournaments, we are interupted by a cutscene of Gwazi mourning the loss of his village.  Ursula offers to go to the alter where the affinity stone is that can cure their drought problem but he refuses of course since he is under our orders.  Of course, Ursula being the kind boss she is orders him to take us there.

Along the way, we are treated to a weird little thing where Eiji tries to tell Ursula what is bothering her.  Unfortunatly, this get’s misinterpreted as Ursula assuming Eiji has feelings for Valens and she obviously doesn’t want to hear any of that.  Eiji then laments that it may be just as well since they would all hate her if they knew the truth

MYSTERIOUS

Anyway, we continue on our way toward the altar while Urlan complains, asking “Why are we doing this again? BECAUSE WE ARE GOOD PEOPLE URLAN STOP BEING AN UNLIKEABLE ASSHOLE.

We arrive at the location to see nothing of the sort that Gwazi mentioned.  Suddenly, three summoners appear and Gwazi is revealed as a traitor.

...Okay Urlan, you were right...for once.

This battle is actually kind of a pain, since it starts with you, Urlan and Ursula against Gwazi and three summoners who will pretty much immediately all summon, leaving you at 3 against 7 which is not favorable and it’s game over if Ursula dies.  Took me 3 attempts but I emerged victorious.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention was during the first league, we ran into Valen’s old friend Ludo appearing working for the dark legionnaires.  He talks some trash to Valens, saying that his school was trash but he must know that since he jumped ship as well...okay, point Ludo but it’s irrelevant since we kick his ass.

After that region has been conquered, we head to Caltha to take on the High Games. Everyone is suitably impressed and pumped and Usus has more life in his voice here then any other part of the game.  With our dream team selected, we take part in the five battle series to be the very best!

Team: Ursula/Zod/Eiji/Langston/Bestla

First battle was arguably the trickiest, with a bunch of imperials and a commander, who constantly buffed their stats.  Luckily, Zod can pretty much take anything thrown at him so we are triumphant.  Round 2 goes by without even breaking a sweat, round 3 was a little tricky due to all the archers ganging up on Zod before he was in counter range and four was easy despite it being an all insect team (HATE THOSE).

The final battle pits us against Ludo’s team once again.  Honestly, he’s not THAT hard.  He doesn’t hit hard, he’s not particularly bulky, his only saving grace is that he is dodgy as hell and if you don’t time your button presses correctly he will dodge pretty much everytime.

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!  BOW DOWN TO BEAR GOD ZOD AND HIS FOLLOWERS

And then...the world went crazy

We flee from the arena in Caltha (Which was really pretty by the way) as the sky grows dark.  The giant statue that watches over the proceedings proceeds to come to life and destory the royal box, along with the King and everyone else that was inside.  

As everyone else flees, one man stands to face the rampaging staute...Muutis.  He queels the beast with a single stroke before being named a hero to Imperia and becoming their leader.

EXCEPT IT WAS ALL A RUSE BY HIM AND EVIL WITCH LADY.

As our group contemplates this, Eiji reveals her dark secret for real this time, that she was hired by Muutis to watch his back as he retrieved whatever macguffin he needed to pull that gambit off. It’s then revealed that they are heading straight for Nordagh so we hurry back to defend our country and King/father from the impeding death.

Oh, and Usus warns us that every battle will be to the death so...any recruits that aren’t the four main characters will die if they fall in battle from here on out...fantastic.

Unfortunately, evil witch lady beats us to the punch and we walk in on her zapping the shit out of the king.  She flees when we appear and leaves us to battle her minions, forcing us to use Ursula/Urlan/Valens/Eiji. We dispatch them quickly before another cutscene starts with Ursula and Urlan talking to their soon to be dead father.

Orin reveals the truth that Ursula is actually Urlan’s twin and that she has some magical abilities and should go seek out the Galdr for information.  Urlan is against this but is, like at every other point in the game, talked into it by Ursula.  Usus agrees and decides to hold off the Imperial forces BY HIMSELF.  Good lord he’s a badass.  Anyway, Urlan and Usus leave which leaves Ursula and Valens to share a tender moment.

They also may or may not have kissed...I may have been looking down and looked up just in time to see the scene fading...

Anyway, we journey to the Galdr and after a laughably easy battle, Ursula finally get’s the secret’s of her powers revealed.  Not only is she the darkness...BUT THE LIGHT.  She is the last Valkyrie and has the ability to stop the Dark God, along with Valens, who will take the place of his father as the previous Valkyrie’s guardian.  CONVENIENT.

Anyway, we make our way to the old Valkyrie city that is now ruled by Cyclops to go retrieve a staff that belongs to the Valkyrie.  However, once we arrive, the Cyclops King does not approve and we are thrown into battle again.

EXCEPT THIS TIME WE CAN FINALLY CHOOSE OUR PARTY AGAIN! URSULA/ZOD/LANGSTON/EIJI GO!

What follows, is a very cool sequence of battles where the Cyclops king will summon the affinity god of each of the four elements (Fire/Water/Wind/Earth) and you have to take them down.  The creatures are huge, taking up a whole 3X3 area. 

Luckily, they also go down pretty easily, with the exception of the Wind one who was a tank.  The designs were really cool though and it was probably my favorite moment of the game so far, definitely suitably epic.

Left to his own devices, the Cyclops King charges us himself.  We charge into battle and get about half of his health down before he can attack...taking off over half of Zod’s health in one shot.

SHITSHITSHITSHITSHIT!

Luckily, he spends the other two turns he get’s trying and failing to use status effect spells, allowing the bear god to escape unharmed.  Once that ends, Ursula picks up the sword and get’s a nifty power up and new wardrobe.  She announces that we need to go to where the Dark God had last risen, being the place where he will be more powerful and the ideal place for our enemies to attempt to summon him.

However, that will have to wait til next time.  But yeah...this picked up and I am excited to finish it!

Going Digital!  Digimon World Dawn Finale!

After many hours of grinding, work, grinding, heartbreak, grinding, grinding and more grinding, this game has been defeated!

I had surprisingly taken care of more plot then I expected in the previous update so there are really only two plot missions for this update.  One was to go to Proxy Island to meet up with...whoever the leader of Kowloon Co was (the leader of Waruseadramons group).  This leads us into an area that is disappointing in pretty much every single category.  Not fun to navigate, not many interesting digimon and not a good exp spread either...love you too Proxy Island.

After stumbling around for a while, we eventually sneak up on Waruseadramon...singing...about how he’s not such a bad guy...did I mention that I love him?  Anyway, he takes us to his leader and we fight Gaiomon again...who is no match for us obviously at this point.  And honestly...I forget if we had to fight there leader or if he just agrees to help up.  After forking over 100k bits, he agrees to have his company work on a bridge to help us get across to Darkmoon city so we can end this!

Which leads to the intensive hours of grinding in order to get my ideal team for the finale!  However, tiredness of grinding, lack of good Holy exp areas and just general bullshit caused me to shuffle the team around a bit, finally leaving me with this final team.

ImperialdramonBK Eaglemon Gryphonmon Saberleomon Jijimon Dorugoramon

We go talk to our leader and he reveals that All the Night Crow members are crowding at the edge of the bridge looking to come in after us.  Glare tells Waruseadramon to come up with a lock to keep them out while we sneak in.  Spinomon successfully does this while Sayo and Waruseadramon have some very stealth adventures together.  And by very stealthy, I mean not stealthy at all, leading them to entrust us with the task of sneaking in and saving everyone!

I WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN WARUSEADRAMON!

Anyway, once in Darkmoon City we need to defeat three different tamers in order to get a master ID to get into the admin room or whatever.  This is where I may have overgrinded just a tad, as it took just one round of attacks from my team to defeat each of the three tamers.

We head into Night Crow’s lair before being thrust into a fight against a possessed Chaos Gallantmon, who predictably falls easily.  However, now that we’ve injured him, that means Chaosgallantmon can break out from his spell...apparently I don’t freaking know. This leads the little floating core thing that possesed him to float off into the final dungeon.

After being thanked by the leaders of the opposing team and them admitting I’m the only one who can save all their sorry asses, I head into the final dungeon!  Again, pretty easy, a little confusing but certainly not the worst area in the game as far as that’s concerned.

Oh look, it’s Grimmon again...woooooo.  Anyway, he get’s possesed and turns into...some thing and the final boss fight begins!  And this is where I DEFINITELY realized I overgrinded when his hits are doing about 20 damage each...Thanks for overpreparing me, every other Digimon game ever...

Anyway, he falls and then digivolves and tries to put us under some kind of spell.  Of course, this is where THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP BAILS US OUT!  Luckily, the last boss is at least a little challenging, being able to wrack up over 100 damage per hit and put our team to sleep so i got at least a little resistance.  Nonetheless, he falls and we are victorious and are treated to credits that lasted longer then both phases of the final boss fight combined!

So yeah, That was Digimon World Dawn!  A pretty fun game, if a bit on the easy side.  Then again, I suppose one of the Digimon games had to be easy eventually : p

Have a couple ideas for what I’m going to play next, neither of which are RPG’s!

So I bought some games

Went by a used video game store today and a few games for the PS2.  These include...

Dragon Rage: A game I had literally never seen before but you play as a dragon so...automatically awesome

Zone of the Enders: A game I had at least heard of.  It's some kind of space mech shooter and made by Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear fame so...could be good.

Gladius: A game I literally thought I had to be misremembering from my childhood.  It's a Gladiator based Turn based strategy rpg that I played a demo of like...12 years ago.  Very excited to find it again and at a pretty decent price.

So yeah, gonna test these games out and see what I think, may chronicle my progress throughout whichever one I decide to progress in first.  

That's all, BYE PEOPLE!

Digital Transformers! Storm Finishes Watching Digimon Xros Wars!

Yup, after putting it off for long enough, I have finally completed the sixth season of Digimon!  You know the drill, probably some spoilers in this write up so...you’ve been warned.

So the third part of Xros Wars is...different.  I wouldn’t call it bad necessarily, but it is a step down from the first two parts.  It’s very episodic in nature and doesn’t really develop a plot for a large part of the episodes.  The plot and development was interesting when it happened, but there was too few of them on the whole.

Some of the more stand alone episodes were...iffy at best.  One that immediatly comes to mind is the Betsumon episode, which my beef with can be summed up very simply by this paraphrasing of the plot.

Tagiru: Gumdramon!  Fight for your friend! Gumdramon: He abandoned me and doesn’t even remember me, how about no? Tagiru: NO! *Punches in face repeatedly* FRIENDSHIP!

Speaking of Tagiru, him as a protagonist was...alright.  I actually didn’t mind him as much as I thought I would and Gumdramon was a nice partner for him as well.  I’m sure there were a quite a few people dissapointed in Taiki taking a bit of a back seat in this arc but I actually kind of liked getting to see him in more of a mentor/advisory position.  

Also Shoutmon’s desgin upgrade for this season was awesome.

Something I haven’t talked about throughout these post’s but I really probably should is the music.  I pretty much love all the insert songs that get played for each digixros/digivolution and some of the themes are absolutely great for getting you pumped for the epic moments.

So where would I rank Xros Wars out of all the Digimon seasons?  Pretty favorably actually!  I would probably have to put it in sort of an interchangeable depending on the day tie for second with Savers and 02 (And without the third season, it may be second by itself) with Tamers still my all time favorite.  Really glad I finally got myself to watch the series and I enjoyed the experience!

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?!?!? Gladius Part 4

Hello again peoples!  Progress has been made, allies have been gained and many asses have been kicked and mauled!  Let’s get to the recap.

There is a much more difficult spread of missions in the Imperia region, including some tournaments (due to my...somewhat undiverse team...) that forced me to temporarily recruit members to complete certain tasks.  It was honestly a pretty nice balance between challenging but not to the point where you wanted to bash the console in with a hammer.  I did however, recruit some new members to the team, which I will get into at the bottom of this.  The most notable though (to me) is Langston, who is a Minotaur and my first heavy class and is quickly becoming one of my new favorites.

Once we clear out the Imperia region, there is surprisingly little fanfare and plot as we head into the Windward Steppes.  We do see Ursula having the same dream again, though this time it is extended and we see more destruction and beasts before it just kind of slowly pan’s up into the sky and relaxing music plays?  So...not entirely sure what that’s about but alright.

Oh, and then there is a brief scene where a narrator talks about Mutis raising an army for the dark god.  Full disclosure, I kind of wasn’t paying attention to the scene until I heard the name Mutis so I could totally be missing some things here.  I’m not entirely sure we’ve met Mutis but if we have, he’s the assclown who taunted us in Imperia and if not, he was an old war buddy Usus met that was still kind of an assclown.

Anyway, once we get to the next region, it is revealed you can’t compete in the games here unless you have an archer...so that’s arbitrary as hell, but it’s apparently an economic thing somehow...so whatever.

As our group makes it’s way through the camp nearby, we are introduced to a cocky archer lady by the name of Eiji who overhears us lamenting our lack of archer.  She pulls off some fancy arrow tricks with three apples and wins her way onto the team.  She’s kind of portrayed as a trickster so not sure how permenant her addition to the team is, but she’s useful enough for the moment and she helps us earn our symbol to compete in the region and gives intel about the other arenas.

Oh, and Ursula and Valen’s relationship is getting shoved down our throats some more.  Also Urlan still distrusts everyone because he can.

Anyway, that’s all for the major updates. Character section below will only discuss those who are either new or have some important updates that I feel like touching on.  Thanks for reading!

Current squad is all between levels 10-11 at the moment, so let’s get into some specifics.

Zod (11) Zod will also have a place here as long as he continues to be my favorite : p. While admitiedly, he is beginning to lose a bit of his offensive luster, he can still take hits like nobodies business.  Also has Hibernate now, which allows him to recover HP...assuming i ever remember he can do that.

Goff (10)) The Mongrel is very much a glass cannon.  Very quick and has some nasty combo’s to mess people up but falls very quickly in battle.

Langston (11) MINOTAUR!  Slow, bulky, can’t take hits quite as well as I would have imagined.  That being said, hits EXTREMELY hard and has a four hit combo which will one shot damn near anything.  Has proven to be a very nice trump card for missions I fail the first time without his assistance.

Eiji (10) Our new archer friend took me a little bit to figure out how to properly use but I feel like i’m getting the hang of her.  While he melee attacks are (understandably) weak, she can move and attack from a range and has some more powerful longer range attacks.  Also has some status moves but I haven’t really messed around with those yet.

Ekaterina (10) A plains cat who is kind of like a mix of Zod and Bestia (wolf).  Is very fast like Bestia but hits a bit harder.  Unfortunately, seems to be less durable then her and has a smaller pool of moves, for the moment.

Also just recruited a level 11 Ogre (whose name I forget) and haven’t used them yet.  A heavy class so expecting them to be fairly similar to Langston but I’ll let you know when I actually get to use them.

The Valkyria Chronicles...Chronicle Part 2!

Hello again everyone!  In this edition, we go to a party and guess what, THINGS DO GO WRONG!

So we start with Welkin, his boss (Varrot), his old friend who's also in the militia (Faldio) and reporter lady (Ellet?) getting ready to attend a banquet where the princess will be there!  Comrades argue about why Gallia would possibly sign a treaty with the federation after they have always taken a stance of neutrality.  Did it ever occur to them that even with a wonder kid main character powered lieutenant on their side it's still probably a terrible idea to take on a nation ten times bigger then them on their own?

Anyway, Princess has the personality of a sleeping zombie and obvious political shadiness is going on.  Once we exit the party, Welkin and Varrot run into the princess and Welkin speaks ridiculously frankly to his countries royalty.  All seems to end well, but wait.

SHE GETS KIDNAPPED! 10/10! TWIST OF THE YEAR!

Anyway, mission is you need to stop the armored car that has the princess from getting to the bay and going to who the hell knows where.  It's night out and you get a limited amount of squad members to take with you (Rosie, Alicia, Nancy, Dorothy and Karl were the five I choose to take).  You need to shoot out the car's battery in order to stop it and can't use heavy weapons otherwise you'll blow up the entire thing.

I...may have done that on the first go around...kind of felt good though!

Anyway, execution is actually fairly easy.  You block off the route with the tank causing the car to have to take a detour.  On the second go, I already knew where it was going so I was able to have an ambush ready to completely annihilate the car with no issues and earn a B rank in the process.

Afterwards everyone essentially tells the princess to toughen up and she eats cinnamon rolls...so that's good.

Also shiny medals, those are niceeeeeeee.

So yeah, mission complete!  Til next time! Party members and levels will be below the read more.

Next Time: Blowing up a giant train? Blowing up a giant train!

Scouts (GOTTA GO FAST) Level 8 Alicia Ted (Replaces Hermes) Nancy Susie Fresia

Stormtroopers (BAM BAM) Level 9 Rosie Lynn (Replaces Alex) Salinas Dorothy Jane Nina

Lancers (FUCK TANKS) Level 9 Largo Yoko Elysse Nils (Replaces Walter)

Engineers (FIX TANKS) Level 8 Karl Nadine

Snipers (EAGLE EYES) Level 8 Cezary Marina Catherine

Deceased

Wavy (Chapter 8)